This is not a competition so much.
I have a vague recollection of seeing a film, probably on American Sky TV on holiday that looked to have been shot in the late 90s or early 2000s.
It was a particularly haunting film that while not blockbuster material, I wouldn't mind seeing again.

The plot was about a conspiracy.
A number of children had won a competition and had gone on a light aircraft which crashed and those onboard were killed.
One child's parents suspected that there was more to the incident than a plane crash.

In the end, it became apparent that the plane journey was a setup. The aircraft had been consumed by some kind of creature that was normally invisible.
The whole competition was to get the children together and provide them as a kind of human sacrifice to the creature.

When the parents got too close to the truth, the firm that organised the flight tried to dispose of them.
The parents had the help of a black female police officer who was killed either by the creature or, I think, by the firm's henchmen.
I remember she used a Glock 17 to defend herself when she investigated a building but it didn't do her much good.

The form of the creature as I recall was like a giant mouth in the sky with tentacles and was ghost-like, even when it could be seen.

Glad you found it, although the Wikipedia description doesn't sound very close! I thought it was the Altitude one from the way you described it! It's funny how these things can stick with you, I've had a few like that from my childhood where I could remember a tiny bit but hunting it down was really challenging. Witness, for example, this one - I've always been able to remember the missile shooting base and I knew it was old, but that was about it - I think I saw it in my grandmother's house once. Looks cheesy as hell to modern eyes of course, but I obviously liked it at the time!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terrornauts

I finally got around to seeing this film during my holiday after downloading it months ago.

It was reasonably close to what I remember but it was clear that I hadn't seen more than about 30mins of the film the first time.

The aliens did have a means of pulling people up into the sky but you didn't really see what it was. Maybe my sky fish/monster was made up from watching Hellboy once or twice.

Julianne Moore also had a Palm Tungsten in the film - a very neat little handheld computer from a more civilised time before every rabid savage had an iPhone.
I used to have the same Palmpilot, which is why it struck a chord, but it was killed in action many years ago.

The ending was nicer than I remembered. Everything worked out for the best in the end.

I can recommend that film completely. Knowing more-or-less where it went made it easier to watch because it was quite tense.
It was also a reasonable length. Due to quite fast pacing it was only 90mins. No 3-hour LOTR marathon there.